SAMPLE  QUESTIONS FOR BIRDDOGGING

Below are sample birddogger questions for 2022 congressional candidates, crowd-sourced from the network and vetted by experts and allies. Since the best birddog actions involve “winning the room,” the questions avoid technical jargon and partisan red flags, and aim for easily understandable requests that candidates from any political party could say “yes” to. Guidelines:

• Avoid open ended questions, especially “what will you do about X?” or “what is your plan for X?”
• Avoid retrospective questions, “Why did you do X bad thing?” Skillful birddogging wins over most of the people in the room (or at least doesn’t alienate them), and allows a target to say “yes” and look good—or say “no” and expose themselves as people who are unworthy of voter support.
• Questions are generally 40 seconds long or less, and no more than one minute.
• About 1/2 of every question is a powerful, emotional personal story about yourself or someone you care about--a true story that resonates with the people in the room and generates sympathy. The last 1/2 of a good birddogger question is a request for specific, measurable action, in the future, that assumes little prior knowledge in the room or on the part of the candidate, and still makes sense to everyone in the room.

Global Pandemic Fund:

• We passed the grim milestone of 1 million American deaths from COVID-19, and existing viruses, such as ebola, zika, polio, and now monkeypox and RSV are cropping up faster and getting worse around the world, putting us all at risk. $10 billion annually from all donors would pandemic-proof the planet, saving millions of lives and  trillions of dollars.Will you fight for the Global Pandemic to make sure that all countries, including the United States, pay a fair-share towards protecting the future?
• We know pandemics are accelerating and intensifying. Globalization, underinvestment in health systems, and climate change breed more deadly pandemics, faster. The next millions-of-deaths outbreak is likely within the decade. Will you fight for all nations to contribute their fair-share towards the new $10 billion Global Pandemic Fund for health security and pandemic preparedness?
• We have lost more than 1 million lives to COVID-19, and every person who died has left 9 people behind them. Tens and thousands of children are without caregivers. Millions of Americans will never forget. If elected to office, will you ensure that America leads by example in preventing future pandemics by pushing for all countries, including the United States, pay their fair-share towards the $10 billion annually needed by the Global Pandemic Fund, to save millions of lives and trillions of dollars and ensure that this nightmare does not happen again?
• Additional point to highlight: The Global Pandemic Fund will ensure the US does not shoulder the entire burden of recovering from COVID-19 and preventing the next pandemic alone, and instead, holds a permanent leadership seat in fund governance and holding partner countries accountable.
  

Vaccinate the World:

• We lost more Americans to COVID after we had the vaccines than before we had them, because of the variants that emerge when billions of impoverished people worldwide are left waiting for vaccines. More pandemics are ahead – until we tackle root causes of climate and deforestation, they will keep getting worse and coming faster. If elected to office, will you ensure that this grim cycle ends by committing to the goal of new vaccines in 100 days, and then vaccinating the world within 100 days?
• Americans spent more money on pet food last year than our government did for global vaccination efforts. Less than 1% of all the previous COVID relief has been directed to fight COVID globally, although there is clear science indicating that if the world was vaccinated, there wouldn’t have been delta and omicron variants. If elected to office, will you commit to ending the grim cycle of viral variants by supporting global efforts to build up local manufacturing capacity around the world and sharing the vaccines invented substantially with U.S. taxpayer funds?
• Vaccine Justice Alternative: We’ve learned from the HIV/AIDS pandemic that only when lifesaving treatments are readily available without cost barriers will we ever get the upper hand on a global pandemic. In order to meet the millions of doses needed to reach anything close to global herd immunity, and be adequately prepared for the next zoonotic threat, we need sustainable, local production of vaccines, medicines and diagnostics. If elected to office, will you commit to ensuring the U.S. government uses EVERY tool available to facilitate technology transfer and sustainable financing of local manufacturing of these lifesaving tools in the global south?
  

Bolster Public Health Jobs:

• Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly not worked. We have spent trillions of dollars, yet we have lost over a million lives. Decades of public health disinvestments in communities like ours made this happen. The too-few public health jobs created during COVID are at risk of expiring from one-time funding. We need long-term sustained investments to stop COVID-the sequel. Will you fight for permanent public health jobs that are rooted in our communities and reach the most vulnerable – the elderly and the poor – and ensure that we have national systems in place to combat health threats locally?
  

Support Long Covid Survivors:

• Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, many in the chronic disease community knew that there would be a percentage of people who would not get better after acquiring Sars-CoV-2. Unfortunately, current numbers and trends indicate that Long COVID is a public health disaster, with more than 15 million cases resulting from this pandemic, many of which are in their prime working years. If elected, can you commit to a Long COVID assistance program to help people with Long COVID and their families? Can you also make sure that people diagnosed with Long COVID receive Social Security Disability benefits?
• If elected, can you commit to forming a White House level Long COVID Task Force composed of patient experts, post-viral disease specialists, labor economists, public health advisors, and other relevant experts, to address the needs of our nation’s growing Long COVID community?